Printmaking Contemporary Practice
Diarmuid O’ Leary
My artwork is a visual journey of exploring and investigating themes that relate to location and nostalgia. Main themes that will inform this body of artwork will include Place and Identity, my personal childhood experience and object relations. Taking inspiration from my fascination with family, history, and memories from my childhood I have built a body of artwork inspired by this. This artwork will mainly concentrate on objects I stumbled upon while exploring in the home. It will primarily focus on an old suitcase and antique chest I found while exploring an outbuilding at my late grandparents’ home. These objects open a small window into the lives of the people. Objects can put us in touch with the past in an honest and immediate way, helping us to a more complex understanding of the past.
The work is concerned with the exploration of drawing, colour, line, texture, pattern, and ambiguity. My work aims to reveal and conceal by layering and combining the circular shape and monochrome images. I utilize and incorporate both digital photography and traditional techniques of printmaking within my practice. Photographic images have become part of my printing process but also as individual photographic series.